This cult favorite degenerate cocaine crime caper starts out in what looks like South Central L.A and ends up in rural Arkansas. Directed by Carl Franklin from a script by Billy Bob Thornton, and starring Thornton, Bill Paxton, Cynda Williams, and Michael Beach, it begins with bloody bodies on the floor and ends with bloody bodies on the ground. There is some sprightly dialogue en route, some sharp editing, fine acting all around, and the dramatic tension is well maintained. We are intrigued by the clash of personalities and the degenerate hijinks. However, after awhile I began to feel that if they light up one more cigarette I will be forced to rip the pack from their hands, tear the stogies into shreds, and feed the debris to them with a large spoon. Also the standard quota of one thousand improvisations on the f-word was exceeded here. I am therefore condemning director Carl Franklin to an absurdist nightmare in which he dreams of getting scripts in the mail in which the dialogue for all characters consists of just that one word in its various grammatical forms, repeated for one hundred and twenty pages.
Paxton plays a small town sheriff in awe of the cops from the big city who is nonetheless intent on proving his manhood. (One of the cops, by the way, in a bit of prescient genius, looks a whole lot like former L.A. cop Mark Fuhrman before he got all those bags under his eyes.) Thornton is a kind of murderous cocaine-addled urban animal in a long greasy pigtail whose life has neither direction, purpose nor insight. Williams, whose primal sexiness will keep your eyes open even if it's two a.m., plays a chocolate strawberry who can kill when she has to. Beach is an icy cold-blooded knife murderer who spends his off-duty hours worshiping his well-muscled body and practicing squeaky-clean living. The familiar Billy Bob Thornton fascination with things country contrasted with things city is explored here and reminds us a little of A Simple Plan (1998) in which he also teamed up with Bill Paxton. This genre, which I might call "Grunge City gore," was morphed into an art form during the eighties and nineties in films from, e.g., Coen and Coen, Blood Simple (1984), David Lynch, Wild at Heart (1990), Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs (1992), Oliver Stone, Natural Born Killers (1994), and others. This is actually one of the better ones, but I think I need a break. Maybe a nice Disney favorite or something with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks...or even something with Bette Midler and Whoopie Goldberg.
Then again, maybe NOT.
Incidentally, the reason all these films made especially during the late eighties and early nineties contain some much blood and guts and cigarette smoke is (1) Sex had become somewhat taboo because of the rise of AIDS, and so Hollywood switched to violence, and (2) The tobacco companies fronted money for films that promised to have a whole lot of puffing going on. Hopefully we are living in more enlightened times.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)
Paxton plays a small town sheriff in awe of the cops from the big city who is nonetheless intent on proving his manhood. (One of the cops, by the way, in a bit of prescient genius, looks a whole lot like former L.A. cop Mark Fuhrman before he got all those bags under his eyes.) Thornton is a kind of murderous cocaine-addled urban animal in a long greasy pigtail whose life has neither direction, purpose nor insight. Williams, whose primal sexiness will keep your eyes open even if it's two a.m., plays a chocolate strawberry who can kill when she has to. Beach is an icy cold-blooded knife murderer who spends his off-duty hours worshiping his well-muscled body and practicing squeaky-clean living. The familiar Billy Bob Thornton fascination with things country contrasted with things city is explored here and reminds us a little of A Simple Plan (1998) in which he also teamed up with Bill Paxton. This genre, which I might call "Grunge City gore," was morphed into an art form during the eighties and nineties in films from, e.g., Coen and Coen, Blood Simple (1984), David Lynch, Wild at Heart (1990), Quentin Tarantino, Reservoir Dogs (1992), Oliver Stone, Natural Born Killers (1994), and others. This is actually one of the better ones, but I think I need a break. Maybe a nice Disney favorite or something with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks...or even something with Bette Midler and Whoopie Goldberg.
Then again, maybe NOT.
Incidentally, the reason all these films made especially during the late eighties and early nineties contain some much blood and guts and cigarette smoke is (1) Sex had become somewhat taboo because of the rise of AIDS, and so Hollywood switched to violence, and (2) The tobacco companies fronted money for films that promised to have a whole lot of puffing going on. Hopefully we are living in more enlightened times.
(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)